TOPICS: ‘Rent’ costly for teacher

THE musical Rent isn’t for everyone, and Bonnie Rae might never want to see it. It’s cost her a bundle of money.

Ms Rae teaches English and history at Mayfield’s San Clemente High, and was on NBN’s Millionaire Hot Seat last Friday.

Her first question was about the Arafura Sea between Australia and Indonesia. We wouldn’t have got that. Ms Rae did, and secured $1000.

Alas, the next one was about Rent. For $50,000, which opera was it based on? Ms Rae bowed out.

‘‘I didn’t know, but I’ll never forget it now because it cost me $50,000,’’ Ms Rae told Topics.

San Clemente students were abuzz on Monday morning with talk of their teacher’s game show cameo.

‘‘A lot of them had their nans ring them and say ‘‘your teacher’s on TV’’, which was sweet,’’ she said.

For future reference, if you ever bump into Eddie McGuire and he asks you which opera Rent was based on, the answer is Puccini’s La bohème.

Hat cam to curb abuse

We can’t stop thinking about Ashleigh Scriven’s letter, and not because it’s about anything remarkable. What she describes is all too familiar.

Ms Scriven had just finished a run in King Edward Park when some mental giants on their Ps roared past, honking and yelling sexist abuse. The giants made three passes.

Firstly, we’re sorry it happened. We’ve copped abuse while running (for example, ‘‘get a car, d*ckhead’’, which we quickly decided wasn’t a sales pitch), but the calls aimed at women have a nastier edge.

People’s first reaction is often ‘‘take down their plates and call the cops’’, but that’s hard to do in the heat of the moment.

So what’s the answer?

Perhaps we should look to Russia, where it emerged after this month’s meteor explosion that everyone has a dashboard camera.

That’s because hit-and-run crashes are common, and so are insurance scams.